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I want to address two issues: 1) the substance of the article, and 2) the question of bias by the NYT. On the first issue, if we look beyond the NYT’s style of reporting we see that, even if we accept the facts as reported, what happened at the Vatican departs from the template that the NYT would like to present. The implication in this, together with other articles, is that the Church was involved in a vast international conspiracy to actively protect known abusive priests. Rather, what we find is a Church that was slow to recognize and accept the reality of such horrible crimes by those who had taken on a vocation to holiness. Afterwards, it struggled with trying to balance the need to proceed quickly in these cases and at the same time protect the rights and presumed innocence in law of accused priests. Hence we have the question of the statute of limitations. This struggle is not unique to the Catholic Church; we find the same problems in U.S. criminal law. After the fact, we find that both canon law and public law were inadequate. The reality is that neither church canon law nor public criminal law were designed to cope with the special circumstances of the abuse of minors.

Secondly, it must be pointed out that the debates at the Vatican presented by the article have nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with removing priests from active ministry or protecting children. These issues were, and are, the responsibility of the local bishop. Rather they have to do with removing priests from the clerical state, a complex relationship of rights and responsibilities between the priest and the Church. To present this issue as if it were about protecting children is a gross misrepresentation.

As to the issue of bias on the part of the NYT. The first question is why is this news? These were events that happened 10-20 years ago. There is clearly a drum beat to keep this issue in the public eye and to attach responsibility to the pope. Then there is the issue of false reporting. I will give a few examples:

The office led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had actually been given authority over sexual abuse cases nearly 80 years earlier, in 1922, documents show and canon lawyers confirm. But for the two decades he was in charge of that office, the future pope never asserted that authority, failing to act even as the cases undermined the church’s credibility in the United States, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere.

The implication, of course, is that the congregation had the responsibility to initiate its own investigations, sending out agents like the FBI to root out abusive priests. The truth, however, is that the congregation could only handle cases that were sent to it by the bishops. No referral, no action. Indeed, Rome would not even know about the cases unless they were referred by the bishops. The Vatican is not the federal government with vast resources for law enforcement. One would be surprised at how small the staffs at the Vatican really are.

But the future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction.

By this the NYT is implying that the pope, having full knowledge of the extent of the abuse, was actively involved in a cover-up to obstruct justice. Rather, everyone was slow to appreciate the extent of the problem and were struggling with a legal structure that was inadequate to the issue; a problem shared with public criminal law.

During this period, the three dozen staff members working for Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were busy pursuing other problems. These included examining supernatural phenomena, like apparitions of the Virgin Mary, so that hoaxes did not “corrupt the faith,” according to the Rev. Brian Mulcahy, a former member of the staff. Other sections weighed requests by divorced Catholics to remarry and vetted the applications of former priests who wanted to be reinstated. …
As Father Gauthé was being prosecuted in Louisiana, Cardinal Ratzinger was publicly disciplining priests in Brazil and Peru for preaching that the church should work to empower the poor and oppressed, which the cardinal saw as a Marxist-inspired distortion of church doctrine. Later, he also reined in a Dutch theologian who thought lay people should be able to perform priestly functions, and an American who taught that Catholics could dissent from church teachings about abortion, birth control, divorce and homosexuality.

Notice the size of the staff, three dozen, to handle the doctrinal work of a church of over 1 billion members. Then notice how the implication is being made that the congregation was being negligent on the issue of priest abuse because is was busy with unimportant "supernatural phenomena" and other issues, persecuting innocent theologian while ignoring abusive priests. Rather, these other issues of a theological nature are the primary responsibility of the congregation. It is the responsibility of the bishops to discipline their priests. The congregation only gets involved in the limited question of reduction from the clerical state when it is referred by a bishop. And yes, there is, rightly, the question of following canon law. What those bishops who are now trying to shift the blame to Rome were trying to do was avoid the hard work of following the law, wanting to take a short-cut through a simple administrative act. This might be appealing until you raise the question of justice for falsely accused priests. But what are a few ruined lives in exchange for good PR?

Other misrepresentations could be presented from the article. It is clear that the NYT is not just reporting news but is trying to advance an agenda. But that should not come as a surprise to anyone, should it?